It must be very demanding to be German

The Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall Smith. Page 163.

She worked the entire morning. The post had brought a further bundle of submissions for the review and she entered the details of each of these in the book which she kept for the purpose. She suspected that several would not survive the first stage of screening; although one of these, “Gambling: An Ethical Analysis,” revealed, at first glance, some possibilities. What ethical problems did gambling occasion? Isabel thought that there was a straightforward utilitarian argument to this, at the very least. If you had six children, as gamblers so often seemed to do (another sort of gambling? she wondered) then one had a duty to steward one’s resources well, for the children’s sakes. But if one was well-off, with no dependents, then was there anything intrinsically wrong in placing, if not one’s last sou, then one’s surplus sous, on a bet? Isabel thought for a moment. Kantians would be in no doubt about the answer to that, but that was the problem with Kantian morality: it was so utterly predictable, and left no room for subtlety; rather like Kant himself, she thought. In a purely philosophical sense, it must be very demanding to be German. Far better to be French (irresponsible and playful) or Greek (grave, but with a light touch). Of course, her own heritage, she thought, was enviable: Scottish commonsense philosophy on one side and American pragmatism on the other. That was a perfect combination. There had, of course, been those years at Cambridge, and that meant Wittgensteinism and a dose of linguistic philosophy, but that never did anybody any harm, as long as one remembered to reject it as one matured. And, I may as well admit it, I am mature, she thought, as she looked out the window of her study, into the garden, with its luxuriant shrubs and the first blossoms of white coming out on the magnolia.